The Charge

The Case

Above Mrs. Lovett's less-than-successful meat pie shop, in a single room
adorned simply with a chair and a razor, Sweeney Todd sits and waits. Recently
escaped from an Australian prison, Todd is back in London to settle scores. Sent
away on trumped-up charges by the cruel, wicked Judge Turpin, Todd (who was
really Benjamin Barker before his "return") has seen his family suffer
at the hateful hands of the jaundiced jurist. Turpin has even made himself
guardian over Todd's daughter Joanna and has his evil eyes on marrying her.
Setting up a barbering business above Lovett's low-rent restaurant seems the
perfect ruse. But the killing of a corrupt colleague in the hairstyling trade
leaves Todd with unfinished business, and Mrs. Lovett with a body to dispose of.
Together, they hit upon an ingenious plan. Todd will get his retribution, and
Mrs. Lovett will use the "leftovers" in her cuisine.

Soon, all of London is swarming to the pie shop. Todd can't supply enough
"meat" to match the demand. Still consumed by rage, he plots Judge
Turpin's downfall. A young sailor named Anthony (who rescued Barker/Todd as he
drifted at sea) has met and fallen in love with Joanna and wants to steal her
away from the horrible arbitrator. When Turpin discovers this, he has Joanna
shipped off to an insane asylum. Anthony goes to Todd for help. The Demon Barber
of Fleet Street devises a plan. He will get his payback after all. But the price
that everyone pays may be too great, as violence begets even more violence at
the hands of Sweeney Todd.

When it opened on the Great White Way in 1970, no one could contemplate the
impact it would have on the future of musical theater. Before it arrived, a
typical greasepaint gala was overblown and lavish, substituting sumptuous set
designs and costumed antics for anything resembling innovation. From hits like
Oliver! to full-out flops like the André Previn/Alan Jay
Lerner-penned Coco (starring the sensational
songstress…Katharine Hepburn?), Broadway proved that the stodgy old
notions of the stagy musical were on life support. Then a few counterculture
craftsmen busted through with the anthem pop-rock of Hair, and the
"Age of Aquarius" was born. But the legitimate stage wanted its
audience back and someone needed to come along and supercede the hippies. Much
to everyone's amazement, the savior was right under their hypercritical
noses.

After a five-year absence from the stage (having seen two of his more
adventurous efforts fail outright), a soon-to-be legend of the theater came to
the rescue with a show that spanned the generations to spark a renaissance. The
show was Company, and its creator, Stephen Sondheim, ushered in a new
Golden Age of experimental Broadway shows. Company was a revue, a loosely
interlinked set of scenes strung along a plotline involving Bobby, a mid-30s
bachelor, and his interaction with some married friends. It marked the first in
a long line of concept musicals that Sondheim and his frequent collaborator,
director Hal Prince, would oversee in the next decade. With such innovative
titles as Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), and
Pacific Overture (1976), Sondheim and Prince reestablished the American
musical. But it wasn't until 1979 that Sondheim hit upon a formula that would
literally redefine what a musical could actually be about. His horror/comedy
cavalcade was called Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Nothing about this show should work. Its slaughter-meets-cannibalism
storyline is too graphic and grotesque for the average, mostly mild-mannered,
middle-aged theater patron. The vast majority of Sweeney's dialogue and
emotional resonance is featured in song, not in expositional exchanges. The
staging is sparse and the characters resemble ancient political cartoons come to
life. And yet somehow, Sondheim got it all to work. He managed the magnificent
feat of finding the proper center between cabaret and slasher film, opus and
bawdy sing-along. Featuring a flawless cast (including Angela Lansbury, Queen of
the Broadway musical), a seedy, sinister tone, and a wealth of memorable music,
Sweeney Todd was so far ahead of its time that today, in 2004, people are
still marveling at how it—and old Steve—got away with it. Watching
it in light of the last 20 years of musical theater, you can see how others like
Andrew Lloyd Webber took the dark tone and complex narrative nature and, with
the help of Trevor Nunn's eye for garish opulence, created Phantom of the
Opera and Sunset Boulevard. You can even imagine the start of such
stage stalwarts as Les Miserables and Miss Saigon in this epic,
apocalyptic tale. Not since Candide had such a multifaceted musical
messed with tone and atmosphere the way Sweeney Todd did. It marked the
beginning of the maturation process for all Great White Way wannabes.

Sweeney Todd—this Entertainment Channel version of the show was
taken from a 1982 national touring company staging that featured a few members
of the original cast—is simply stunning, a fully realized modern opera set
within the weird world of Victorian London. Instead of a regular song-and-dance
display, Sondheim crafted something much richer, more detailed and diverse. He
has taken a tall tale, mixed it with a little contemporary psychology, and
passed it through a bloody revenge thriller to make a melodic anomaly—the
first truly tuneful terror tale. There is limited movement among the performers
on stage; no full-blown production numbers or sap-happy tap-alongs are offered.
Instead, director Hal Prince provides a practically bare stage, with only
scaffolds and moveable set pieces to suggest the claustrophobic and dark nature
of the UK's industrial age. England in the period of the difference engine was
awash in a thick coating of soot, the remnants of the new mechanical revolution.
It is within this bleak, black structural skeleton that events play out in
marvelous moments of macabre monster mythology. Throats are cut, corpses get
stacked up like cordwood, and human meat pies are baked in large, loaming ovens.
Intertwined between the doublecrossing and death-dealing is the baneful, baroque
score conceived by Sondheim as a tribute to the operetta, mixed with the more
experimental, poignant nature of his more current works. This compositional
ideal transformed the musical into a messenger not only of emotion, but also of
environment and the existential.

From the moment the chorus commands us to "attend the tale of Sweeney
Todd," to the finale which seems to suggest the universal nature of the sin
and slaughter we've witnessed, this show is just plain spectacular. Sondheim
purposely avoids the pop song mentality with his music, creating signature
themes for each character and then reusing them throughout the narrative. Yet
there are standout numbers, wonderful odes to love ("Johanna,"
"Pretty Women"), life ("Not While I'm Around"), and
questionable cuisine ("The Worst Pies in London," "A Little
Priest," "God, That's Good"). During many of the musical
showstoppers, the spine literally tingles with untold entertainment.

From a performance standpoint, the cast is superb. It is clear why Lansbury
won the Tony Award for her performance; her Mrs. Lovett is everything the role
demands—equal parts comic, calculating, and even a little crazy. George
Hearn (who would later gain huge fame with the role of Albin in the musical
version of La Cage Aux Folles) plays the title character with a mix of
bluster and bitterness that accentuates Todd's homicidal tendencies. Although
not the original Sweeney (sadly, Len Cariou's Tony-winning work in the role is
left for memory to keep immortalized), Hearn never once hints that the character
is not his own invention. Everyone else, from Edmund Lyndeck's ominous Judge
Turpin to Ken Jennings's endearing Tobias Ragg, is pitch-perfect and terrific.
If you are not moved by the overlapping mania of "God, That's Good" or
touched by the haunting duet "Pretty Women," there is something wrong
with your pleasure centers. Sweeney Todd marks a monumental moment in
musical theater, and for fans of this show (and this version of it), the wait
for a DVD release has been far too long.

So what's the downside of rushing out and buying this disc, you say? Is
there anything about the presentation that should give you pause or force you to
pass it by? Well, if you demand the slightest bit of bonus content when you
acquire a title in the digital format, then there is a huge hindrance to
grabbing this goodie forthwith. Someone over at Warner Brothers has decided that
since this Broadway masterpiece only appeals to the cultural snobs in the
audience, brightening it up with bells and whistles seems pointless and
financially perilous. How else do you justify the significant lack of menu
screen options? Warner must believe that only diehard devotees to Sondheim or
Sweeney will be interested in this 22-year-old title (even though PBS
endlessly replays the "concert" version of the show, featuring Hearn
and Patti LuPone, during pledge drives). At least they made it worth your while
from the technical standpoint. The audio and video are stunning, better than the
bargain-basement VHS copies that have circulated for years. While there is some
flaring in the old-fashioned tape transfer, the 1.33:1 full frame picture is
still quite vibrant and colorful. And there is a new soundtrack—a Dolby
Digital 5.1 remastering that is pure aural bliss (it can lead to a little
performer/voice displacement, however, but it's nothing fatal). But there is
not another thing here to suggest Sweeney Todd's power as a show
(it won eight Tonys) or as a piece of theater history. While you can access the
lyrics via the "subtitle" option, some manner of libretto, character
guide, or actor filmography would have been nice. Sweeney is a wonderful
work of theatrical art. It should have been treated with more respect.

There have long been rumors that Tim Burton would direct a movie version of
this gleeful Gothic gross-out, and the mind boggles (and the aesthetic timbers
tingle) at the thought. Envisioning a cross between The Nightmare Before Christmas and Sleepy Hollow is enough to give musical
lovers the "when will it happen?" shivers. Hopefully it will take
place one day. But until then, we can witness a truly Victorian vision of the
cutthroat ritual of revenge. This DVD is a marvelous reminder of the magic of
musical theater. Stephen Sondheim saved the genre and its Broadway home base.
See Sweeney Todd to see how he did it.

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